Ah, curse you, Crouching Tiger. Your excellence and grace kicked open the doors to finer Hong Kong cinema in the US for many of us, creating an audience for intelligent, well-done films from a foreign culture whose timeless storytelling would appeal to anyone even jaded Americans. And for the past six years, we've been thrashing ourselves to get to the theaters to see most of your new releases, at least the more heavily promoted ones, to see if there would be another such film to greet us. Most of them fell noticeably short, and the closest, House of Flying Daggers, while strong, wasn't in the same league. But Curse had everything going for it in the trailers, even the presence of Tiger's lead, Chow-Yun Fat. So there was reason to hope.
Perhaps comparisons are unfair; maybe comparing other HK period pieces to Crouching Tiger is like comparing current dramas to Citizen Kane. But the fact remains that for many of us, Tiger is a benchmark, albeit a high one, and the hope remains that we'll once again see such an enchanting and absorbing film.
Curse follows the personal lives of the Emperor of China (Chow Yun-Fat), and his wife (Gong Li) and their three sons as they struggle against one another in palace intrigue. At first I was reminded of The Lion in Winter, which starts with the same premise, but Curse quickly moves away from that film (sadly). There's all sorts of intrigue: the Empress is having an affair with her step-son; the Emperor is trying to poison his wife slowly; the sons jockey for position to be next in line for the throne; and so on. Everyone has their secrets, everyone has an agenda, and they're all playing for power.
So, Chinese Shakespeare, right? No. More like Chinese opera, because everything in Curse is blown up huge, from the costumes to the emotions to the sets to, well, everything. Curse never once tries for realism, instead immediately depositing us in a gaudy fantasy world where everything is super-technicolor, from the sumptuous robes to the brilliant colored walls to, well, everything. At first the lushness of setting is intriguing, but after a while it's the visual equivalent of a seven-course meal comprised of nothing but candy. You want to scream enough already! By the time we reach the final action sequence, it's more than you can bear.
The acting is expansive, but I'm betting that's by design (you'd almost have to go over the top if you wanted to compete with all that scenery). Chow Yun-Fat plays it slyly villainous, and Gong Li cannot help but elicit your sympathies as the ill-fated Empress. But it's all in wide, wide brushstrokes, as if the audience all sat very far away and could barely see the action. When we reach the climax of the story a long, drawn out, hyperbolic battle scene we're on overload, from too much scenery, too much frenetic action, and too much emotion; you're simply glad the movie's ended, it's so exhausting. Even more disappointing to western audiences, the movie has an unsatisfying conclusion, at least to our tastes in drama.
To me, this movie wasn't as bad as Jet Li's Hero, with which it shared a great many flaws, mostly because something actually happens here (that, and I've always disliked Rashomon copies, as the original is pretty overrated). But it was in most ways a pretty big letdown. Maybe some cultural messages simply don't translate, or maybe, like I said at the top, the quest for the next Crouching Tiger simply got in the way. In any case I left the theater disappointed that this movie wasn't more, and in some cases less, than it was; maybe on DVD the over-ripeness will be toned down, but somehow I doubt it.
Perhaps comparisons are unfair; maybe comparing other HK period pieces to Crouching Tiger is like comparing current dramas to Citizen Kane. But the fact remains that for many of us, Tiger is a benchmark, albeit a high one, and the hope remains that we'll once again see such an enchanting and absorbing film.
Curse follows the personal lives of the Emperor of China (Chow Yun-Fat), and his wife (Gong Li) and their three sons as they struggle against one another in palace intrigue. At first I was reminded of The Lion in Winter, which starts with the same premise, but Curse quickly moves away from that film (sadly). There's all sorts of intrigue: the Empress is having an affair with her step-son; the Emperor is trying to poison his wife slowly; the sons jockey for position to be next in line for the throne; and so on. Everyone has their secrets, everyone has an agenda, and they're all playing for power.
So, Chinese Shakespeare, right? No. More like Chinese opera, because everything in Curse is blown up huge, from the costumes to the emotions to the sets to, well, everything. Curse never once tries for realism, instead immediately depositing us in a gaudy fantasy world where everything is super-technicolor, from the sumptuous robes to the brilliant colored walls to, well, everything. At first the lushness of setting is intriguing, but after a while it's the visual equivalent of a seven-course meal comprised of nothing but candy. You want to scream enough already! By the time we reach the final action sequence, it's more than you can bear.
The acting is expansive, but I'm betting that's by design (you'd almost have to go over the top if you wanted to compete with all that scenery). Chow Yun-Fat plays it slyly villainous, and Gong Li cannot help but elicit your sympathies as the ill-fated Empress. But it's all in wide, wide brushstrokes, as if the audience all sat very far away and could barely see the action. When we reach the climax of the story a long, drawn out, hyperbolic battle scene we're on overload, from too much scenery, too much frenetic action, and too much emotion; you're simply glad the movie's ended, it's so exhausting. Even more disappointing to western audiences, the movie has an unsatisfying conclusion, at least to our tastes in drama.
To me, this movie wasn't as bad as Jet Li's Hero, with which it shared a great many flaws, mostly because something actually happens here (that, and I've always disliked Rashomon copies, as the original is pretty overrated). But it was in most ways a pretty big letdown. Maybe some cultural messages simply don't translate, or maybe, like I said at the top, the quest for the next Crouching Tiger simply got in the way. In any case I left the theater disappointed that this movie wasn't more, and in some cases less, than it was; maybe on DVD the over-ripeness will be toned down, but somehow I doubt it.